Personal Empowerment and Healing from Sexual Trauma with Tracey Bryant

Goddess on Earth is an art installation celebrating the strength of the female spirit by drawing on goddesses from all cultures as archetypes and expressed through contemporary women. We discuss with the artist, her goddesses & Agapi Stassinopolous.

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I knew early on that I wanted to interview Tracey Bryant for my upcoming advice guide, The Sacred Bombshell Handbook of Self-Love. She’s bringing personal empowerment and romantic education to women worldwide.

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Tracey Bryant is a recognized Romance Specialist, Sexual Empowerment Coach, Healer and Love Connoisseur. She adds a candid approach when discussing the arts of love and sexuality. She is the owner of the Honey Luv Lingerie and More Romance Store, a sexual empowerment boutique that assists in service women in the areas of romance enhancement, love, relationships, you name it. She is the host of HoneySoul Radio and she will “enrich your soul with raw and sensual realness.”

Abiola: On your blog, it says that sex and spirit are one and you’re a very spiritual person. Please share with us your definition of sacred sexuality, Tracey.

Tracey: Well, sacred sexuality is honoring spirit and sex as one because everything is born out of sex -- even the soul. We start re-identifying that sexuality is natural, it is human, but is also represented by spirit because all of us have gotten here through sex. Every last one of us has gotten here by the combustion of the orgasmic universe. So, spirit is transported through sexuality and through the vehicle of mother goddess. It’s very important that we learn that sex is also a very real part and a representation of who we are as individuals as well as in human consciousness.

Abiola: Wow, what a beautiful and accessible explanation. Many people from our background, African-American, people of African descent, don't feel comfortable with this conversation when you say sacred sexuality or sacred sensuality because they’re taught that sexuality is something bad. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Tracey: Well, many religions here in the West we have been taught that sex is shameful and it’s dirty and it’s actually been laced with a lot of guilt. However, when you look at it from a perspective of: God has enriched all of our lives through the art and act of sexuality, the act of being able to multiply. But not just be able to multiply in the physical sense, but sexual energy is a place where life and energy is abundant. It multiplies itself over and over and over again. So, it’s very fertile.

It’s very creative and that energy is something that can be expressed not just physically but being able to harness it, to be able to manifest things in the physical world. We are co-creators. Creative energy is sexual energy. When we’re actually having sex, pleasurable sex, sex that inspires you, that awakens you, that gives you the feeling of “I can do everything”, that beautiful essence; when you come into that beautiful essence, it’s like you’re becoming one with God. Religion does not teach that.

Basically, here in the West they oftentimes teach that we’re supposed to abstain and it’s sinful if you’re having too much sexual activity and then they even have with the old religion where women were not even have pleasure. Women were just here for the men and men were supposed to get all the pleasure.

Abiola: I know that you are Louisiana-based. Are you from the Bible belt?

Tracey: No. Actually, I was born in San Diego California. I actually moved here from Louisiana about 13 years ago. My need to be free of that sexual demonization that captured this area here, this Bible belt area, and my need to be free sexually is how HoneyLove was born. I saw that there was a need and here I am coming from a very sexually free place and a mindset. As a child, I had a very sexually free home. When I asked sexual questions, my mom would tell me. My mom was very sexually free. I have to give praise to that that.Sex is an ultimate motivator. Remember, sex equals creation.

Abiola: On your HoneyLove Show, you recently examined self-pleasure for healing sexual trauma. Can you tell us about that?

Tracey: Well, out of six women, five women have been molested or sexually abused at some point in their life. Healing is a lifetime journey. Western society makes you feel like, “Okay, you go in. You take this pill. You’re done or you go in. Get the surgery. You’re done.” But there’s still a maintenance process that goes with that, you know, so maybe you may have your gallbladder taken out. Okay, you’re better, but at the same time, it serves [you to know] what you can’t eat anymore. There’s always maintenance. If you don’t continue on your maintenance path during your healing, you’ll relapse.

Western society usually tries to cure the symptoms instead of the root cause. And also, healing is mind, body, and soul. You can’t just heal the body and not to correct the consciousness of the mind during the sickness. So, that’s what where I come in. I’ve been doing a more soul work, more spiritual, sexual soul work.

Abiola: Yes to soul work!

Tracey: Yes. So, with self-pleasure in healing sexual trauma, I found it to be significant for me because I had remained abstinent for like four years. And there’s a difference between abstinence and celibacy. Celibacy, you see, is when you’re taking the oath of not having a sexual pleasure, any sexual contact. But abstinence actually means that you’re going to take some time off. You’re going to take a vacation from sex. My four year sex vacation. I said, it’s not that I don’t want sex because I do and I understand the energy of sex. I don’t want to necessarily take that away from myself.

So, I want to still have pleasure, but I’m just not ready to embrace someone else giving it to me right now because I have some healing to do. I have some soul work, some homework to do. So, with that, I begin pleasuring myself. And I begin pleasuring myself to the point that I started extending myself into a higher consciousness of sexual awareness to self-pleasure. And how I was doing that is I stopped looking at orgasm as the goal and I started pleasuring myself.

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Abiola Abrams is the author of "The Sacred Bombshell Handbook of Self-Love." You’ve seen The Bombshell Whisperer’s self-love and relationship laser coaching on networks from MTV to The CW and read her positive advice in columns from Essence to Match.com. Abiola wrote her debut novel Dare (Simon & Schuster), about a woman learning to love herself, while she was a BET host. Her award-winning art films and videos examine taboo social issues.